On Statistics (From Fiction to Science-Fiction)

"One more fagot of these adamantine bandages is the new science of Statistics." (Ralph W Emerson, "The Conduct of Life", 1860)

"If you want to inspire confidence, give plenty of statistics – it does not matter that they should be accurate, or even intelligible, so long as there is enough of them." (Lewis Carroll, "Three Years in a Curatorship, By One Whom It Has Tried", 1886)

"No honest historian can take part with - or against - the forces he has to study. To him even the extinction of the human race should be merely a fact to be grouped with other vital statistics." (Henry Adams, "The Education of Henry Adams", 1907)

"Even trained statisticians often fail to appreciate the extent to which statistics are vitiated by the unrecorded assumptions of their interpreters." (George B Shaw, "The Doctor's Dilemma", 1909)

"The double analysis kills the single analysis, and the treble kills the double, until at last a sufficiency of statistics comes very near to common sense." (Hilaire Belloc," The Silence of the Sea", 1940) 

"Statistics only work well when they dwell on large numbers of absolutely free motions, or what has been described as "perfect disorder." If an element of deliberate direction, of conscious "order", meddles with their utter "innocence", the facts in question cease to follow statistical laws." (Salvador de Madariaga," Essays with a Purpose, Freedom and Science, 1954) 

"Fairy tales lie just as much as statistics do, but sometimes you can find a grain of truth in them." (Sergei Lukyanenko, "The Night Watch", 1998)

"Everything is quiet, peaceful and against it all is only the silent protest of statistics..." (John Kricher, "The Silent Protest", 1993)

"Statistics [...] can be used to support or undercut almost any argument." (Marilyn vos Savant, "Growing Up: A Classic American Childhood", 2003)

"Averages might mean something to bureaucrats and engineers, but the sea had no struck with statistics: it was a succession of unpredictable circumstances and extremes." (Frank Schätzing, "The Swarm", 2004)